The lady, as I have said, was handsome and young, and of course all the young fellows who got a chance flirted with her--_en tout bien tout honneur_.

But the Irish chamberlain attached himself to her, not with any but perfectly avowable intentions, but more seriously than the other youngsters, and with an altogether serious eye to her very comfortable dower.
Now during that same summer there was at the Baths Mr.Plowden, the banker from Rome.

He was then a young man; he has recently died an old one in the Eternal City.

His name I mention in telling my story because much blame was cast upon him at the time by people in Rome, in Florence, and at the Baths, who did not know the facts as entirely and accurately as I knew them; and I am able here to declare publicly what I have often declared privately, that he behaved well and blamelessly in the whole matter.
And probably, though I have no distinct recollection that it was so, Plowden may have also been smitten by the lady.

Now, whether the Irishman imagined that the young banker was his most formidable rival, or whether there may have been some previous cause of ill-will between the two men, I cannot say, but so it was that the chamberlain sent a challenge to the banker.